Musings on a Life in the Theatre, Tablet PC's, Cultural Issues, (oh, and the occasional emu sighting...)

Posts from October 2012

October 13, 2012

In case you haven't noticed it is poltiical polling season. If you live in a battleground state, you probably get several calls a week, in addition to the robocalls. There's also a debate swinging around the Internets about ad tracking. You know that promised land were companies collect information on you so they can serve you the ads you want to see. It's becoming a thing as we approach more of this on our smartphones and other smart devices.

Some companies let you turn this off supposedly. (Well, they do, but they don't.) Some scream bloody murder. I think one guy actually said this was like a core democratic principal or some such thing last week, although I can't find the link at the moment.

Yesterday I got a poll call. It was from the state Republican Committee. For some reason they have in their records that I am a registered Republican. I'm not a registered anything. I do vote more on the Democratic side than the Republican, but I'm not a registered party member either way. I found myself answering questions in the way that for Chicago newspaperman Mike Royko used to advise those confronted with exit pollsters. He told them to lie about how they voted. So, I made up a few things as I answered the questions.

I do the same thing with all of these social sites and shopping sites. When I have the time, I'll frequently search for things that I have zero interest in, just to watch how that affects the ads and recommendations I get. To be honest, before I started doing this, I never really saw ads that seemed to focus on my interest or the things I legitmately searched for. While I'm sure there's some science and some art involved. Mostly I think it is pure guesswork. At least before the age of this kind of data tracking, everyone knew it was guesswork. But the reality is that the databases and the algorithyms used to gain that data aren't as smart as most wish they would be.

Why? Humans don't categorize that easily. Perhaps their interests at certain points do, but in the long run, they are much more complex in their interests than the marketers would like us to believe.

So, if you've got some time, or you get a pollster calling, take Mr. Royko's advice and tell a fib or two. I mean we have to keep these folks employed in order to save the economy, right?

October 12, 2012

We interrupt this election to focus on the art or lack of art when it comes to smiling. I know things like decorum and body language matter in debates. But this obssesiveness that I'm seeing on Twitter and elsewhere this morning after the VP debate last night makes me want to laugh larger than Joe Biden's disdainful smile. The mere fact that folks on either side are talking about these things point to the absolute desperation we have reached when it comes to our politics. Both sides were full of baloney last night. Biden's bufoonish smiling and interruptions will put off some, but others will be put off by Ryan's cartoonish smiling and wide eyes. Both, at times actually looked like they wanted to live up to their caricatures.

If the chattering class is still talking about this on the Sunday morning talk shows, then here's a hint. Who wins the election doesn't really matter when it comes to the big issues. Because no one wants to talk seriously about the big issues, the lies on both sides, and the depressing state of affairs we have let this process descend into.

October 11, 2012

For most of my adult life I've reconginzed that most things having to do with politics are more akin to the circus and other forms of show biz than any semblance of reality. Historically that's pretty much always been the case. But it today's world of instant response the violence and volitility of the reactions seems to increase faster than we can comprehened. We may, or may not, have lifted that to a new level in this year's presidential election. Now that every breath or word of a candidate is subject to immediate scrutiny, and perhaps more importantly, to an immediate spin that turns every thing stated into a lie or an untruth or an inaccurate fact, the circus seems to have lost most of the presumed importance that we, somewhere deep inside, want them to have.

Are we kidding ourselves? Or are there just too many individuals who watch these things who actually believe what they see and hear? If it is the latter, then woe be unto us. If we're kidding ourselves, why do we keep playing this game? I don't have answers. I don't have anything other than a sick feeling in my gut that we keep diminishing any hopes of solving problems through elections is some sort of downward spiral that is spinning so fast that we enjoy the spin at the expense of seeing the directoin we're headed in.

October 05, 2012

I've always been a cynic and this quick post isn't about anything new. But I do find it curiously wonderful, in a cynical sort of way, that now Mitt Romney has said his 47% remarks were wrong, how those who so defended him and the remarks during that desperate time in his campaign have now been hung out to dry.

If there were poetic justice (or common sense) in politics, none of these folks would ever be heard from again.

But we all know that won't happen.

The only question that remains on this topic is how much criticism the back trackers and flip floppers will get. I'm guessing the over under on that is somewhere between slim and none.